Monday, July 16, 2012

Decisionmaking

I'm obsessed with it. I have poor impulse control and no moral compass. After I got sick of making crap decisions and dealing with the fallout, I started making decision-making a personal religion.

I have talked before about how economic efficiency is a serviceable prosthetic moral compass. I have also suggested that sociopaths study aspects of decision-making, particularly game theory, to learn how to better harness their sociopathic skills for their benefit.

Of course, decision-making is only as good as the information on which it is based. Luckily sociopaths can display amazing amounts of insight into how the world works.Llike the color blindness of many predators, our inability to see the distractions of the full emotional spectrum and subtleties of social norms can actually improve our ability to stalk our prey at night, or flaws or patterns in the social construct. I have such an uncannily accurate ability to gauge probabilities, to discover patterns in everything (including human behavior), that I sometimes appear psychic. I empathize with people like Cassandra, actually, because although my predictions are frequently accurate, I mostly end up keeping them to myself -- No one even wants to believe them. Sigh.

Sunday, July 15, 2012

More on fear

We've sometimes talked about litmus tests for who is or is not a sociopath. I think I suggested once that you can present the suspected sociopath with a moral Gordian knot and watch how insensitively he responds to the situation. My recent experiences have led me to believe that low fear response can also be a very good way to determine whether someone is a sociopath or not.

Bungee jumping seems to be an adrenaline rush for a lot of people. It wasn't so for me. I guess you can credit my unnaturally low fear response for that. As people got up to jump before me, I was awed at how fearful they looked. I found myself studying the signs of their fear, like trembling hands or a catatonic gaze. I should have known that I was expected to act the same way and that there would be awkwardness if I didn't. There is apparently nothing creepier to a group of friends or strangers than for them to get absolutely panicked about jumping, only to have you look positively gleeful taking the plunge. Well, gleeful and at least a little anxious about the expected discomfort of being slung up and down by my ankles. But fear? Not so much. Word of advice to sociopaths: if you ever go bungee jumping, do not get the video recording. For some reason your lack of fear is more apparent in a video seen by disinterested parties than it is in real life. You don't want to have to answer awkward questions. And for the future, I am going to practice my fake fear reactions. I apparently need a lot of work.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Sidetalking sociopath

The thing I like most about the existence of Dexter as a television show is that it is so widely-liked. This makes talking about sociopath issues without outing yourself very easy. I understand that some sociopaths are incognito, even amongst their friends and family. I myself am pretty out, and am always looking for others to bring into my inner-circle, which is why I am so happy about Dexter. It makes the perfect feel-someone-out-about-how-they-would-feel-knowing-that-their-friend/significant-other/family-member-is-a-sociopath conversation starter. After someone has told you they like it, you can query relatively harmlessly why they do. They may say that they love Dexter the character, or have respect for him, and you can follow up with what exactly it is about Dexter that makes him so likeable. Obviously he does bad things and at the very least has bad tendencies that he has to deal with. Does the way he deals with those tendencies somehow make up for his deficiencies? You can ask if they think he is an accurate portrayal of everyday sociopaths. Does this person believe that sociopaths like Dexter live in real life? Why or why not? If they are doing well so far, maybe ask, do they think that they have ever met a sociopath and not known that the person was a sociopath? If they start getting suspicious, back off. If they start asking you why you like Dexter, say, "Oh, just the same reasons you said." There is a lot of information to be gleaned by sidetalking about sociopathy this way. I'm trying to think of what would be a good analogy in a non-sociopath realm... being in the mafia and talking to people about the Sopranos? Being a spy and talking about Burn Notice? Being gay and talking about Queer as Folk? Being an ex-African warlord and talking about Hotel Rwanda?

Friday, July 13, 2012

Starting over

I have been doing the same thing for around 3 years now.  That's my typical expiration date before I let things fall apart.  And that's really what it is for the most part.  I was talking to a friend about this.  I don't think it's self-destruction for the sake of self-destruction.  It's just abandoning my current life for something different, letting my life raft sink.

I thought of the analogy of an etch a sketch toy.  Let's say that you've spent about 3 years working on an etch a sketch drawing (it took you so long because you have a very flat learning curve).  Finally you get to the end, or maybe just as far as you would like to go on this particular design.  What do you do now?  You shake it up and start over.

You could keep it, maybe frame it and hang it up on the wall.  One time when I was in East Germany I actually visited someone's house where that's what they had done, essentially -- assembled puzzles, then varnished the top, put them in a frame, and hung them on the wall.  Not really the point of a puzzle, I thought.  The point is not to have a pretty picture of something to look at.  The point is the process of the puzzle, the enjoyment you get from cutting your teeth on some new game.  Same with the etch a sketch.  Same with life.  To me the point isn't to get to a certain point in my career or relationships or social circle or geography and just stick with it.  To me the point is the process: the planning, the initial steps, the reassessment, the further plotting, the execution, the tenacity, the fulcrum.  Often I don't even stick around to see the final product.  Sometimes I leave the puzzle half finished.  Once I am bored of sufficiently assured of my success (at least in my own mind), I am ready to move on and start over on something else.  

I know there is something coming up that could change my life drastically in about a year.  Otherwise I might be busy shaking things up right now.  But it's kind of weird timing, both close enough in my two year plan that it makes sense to keep doing what I am doing until then, and long enough away that I'm itching to get on with it.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

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